Future Present Past Irreversible Entanglements

• 1 Juntos Vencemos 02:53
• 2 Don't Lose Your Head 02:41
• 3 Vibrate Higher 06:08
• 4 Panamanian Fight Song 03:25
• 5 We Know 03:39
• 6 Hold On 02:33
• 7 Keep Going 06:49
• 8 The Messenger 06:16
• 9 The Spirit Moves 06:06
• 10 We Overcome 01:24
• Total Runtime 41:54

Info for Future Present Past

Das Free-Jazz-Kollektiv Irreversible Entanglements wurde schon mit dem Spirit des Art Ensemble Of Chicago, der Ekstase des späten John Coltrane, der Spiritualität von Alice Coltrane oder Pharoah Sanders, der Schroffheit des Punk und aktuellen Zeitgenossen wie Shabaka Hutchings oder Makaya McCraven verglichen. Dabei ist die Musik des amerikanischen Quintetts unverwechselbar und eigen. Jetzt meldet es sich mit seinem zweiten Impulse!-Album „Future Present Past“ bei zurück, das zum zweiten Mal im legendären Rudy Van Gelder Studio aufgenommen wurde, in dem u.a. auch Coltranes Klassiker „A Love Supreme“ entstand. Darin verschmilzt das Quintett einmal mehr dynamischen, atmosphärischen Jazz, globale Musiktraditionen, Spoken Word und klare politische Standpunkte.

In der internationalen Musikszene hatten sich Irreversible Entanglements längst einen Namen gemacht, als sie 2023 mit dem Vorgänger „Protect Your Light“ ihr viertes Album als Debüt bei Impulse! Records veröffentlichten. Das Kollektiv aus Philadelphia, Pennsylvania und Washington D.C. wurde 2015 nach einem Konzert gegen rassistische Polizeigewalt gegründet um den Texten von Dichterin, Musikerin und Aktivistin Camae Ayewa alias Moor Mother einen musikalischen Rahmen zu geben

Saxofonist Keir Neuringer, Poetin Camae Ayewa und Bassist Luke Stewart kennen sich von verschiedenen basisdemokratischen Aktionen in Philadelphia. Zusammen reisten sie im April 2015 nach Brooklyn, um an der Manifestation „Musicians Against Police Brutality“ teilzunehmen. Direkt nach ihnen spielte ein Duo Trompete und Drums, bestehend aus Aquiles Navarro und Tcheser Holmes. Getrieben von ihren gemeinsamen musikalischen und politischen Ideen fanden sich die Mitglieder des Ensembles zusammen.

Keir Neuringer organisierte ein Studio in Brooklyn, wo sie ein paar Monate später an einem Nachmittag das erste Mal zu fünft zusammenspielten. Daraus entstand das erste Album „Irreversible Entanglements“, das 2017 gemeinschaftlich vom Don Giovanni Label aus New Jersey und International Anthem aus Chicago herausgebracht wurde. Die überwältigende Reaktion darauf (einschließlich „Best of 2017“-Auszeichnungen von NPR Music, WIRE Magazine, Bandcamp und anderen) führten zu einer hohen Nachfrage nach der Band im Live-Bereich, sodass sie einen Großteil der darauffolgenden Jahre auf Tour verbrachte. Bei ihren Auftritten haben sie mit Legenden wie Amina Claudine Myers, Pat Thomas und Nicole Mitchell zusammengearbeitet. Zu ihren bekanntesten Auftrittsorten gehören das Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago, das Le Guess Who Festival in Utrecht, das Barbican in London und das Smithsonian in Washington DC.

"The weight of a certain world can feel cruel and unusual. Another world uplifts. We form as five and transform into billions. Billions of us on this planet sharing this journey through existence—futures full of possibility and potential, the present with all its anxieties and uncertainties, pasts as wellsprings of ancestral wisdom and histories’ warnings.

This album is five standing on the shoulders of legions. The healers, the alchemists, the rebels, the mothers and fathers who have fought and weaved and invented new ways of being, seeing, and balancing the frequencies of this planet towards trans-dimensional liberation and universal understanding.

We assume our role in this music as messengers, continuing in the tradition’s long march along the arc of the universe. Freedom fighters telling us not to lose our heads amidst imposed chaos. It is our duty to vibrate higher, beyond the noise, above the hype, away from the novelty, over the walls, across the borders: to keep going.

The spirit moves us to sing these fight songs, to sing fight songs, we overcome. To hold on, to keep going, together we overcome" (Irreversible Entanglements)

"Don’t lose your head. You could wring your hands and gnash your teeth. Cry out for mercy at the End of Days, and all you might hear is this record. The Lord is not coming. He will not save you. He is not ignoring your suffering, hasn’t turned His back on your pathetic plight, but Divinity stands in waiting for the human beings to save themselves. Irreversible Entanglement’s fifth and finest album to date is a daringly executed search and rescue mission for temporality, an attempt to spare the sand in the hourglass from those who would devour time, chew it up in a cyclotron and spit out its AI-generated facsimile. Musical sound – tones, beats and silent lacunae agitate a perpetually static pool of nonevents, a bleached-white anti-history slowed down to the languid pace of marketing. Tic-toc – now our dragon eats their clock, their calendar, their dainty schedule of rocket launches and celebrity take downs. When you have your enemy surrounded, isn’t it time, like a hungry anaconda, to let go of all trepidation and just squeeze?

We know – hold on – ain’t nothing quite that easy: Black magic pouring out of the bell of Armstrong’s horn was corrupted somewhere along the way. Amiri Baraka warned you to watch out for them Ghosts, but you let those spooks get in. You let them steal your nerve and rub stinging salt into that choke cherry tree on our Mama’s back. Irreversible Entanglements filters the contaminants out of Pops’ sacred elixir – the dope, the phony classicisms, the glossy commercialisms. No microplastics in this music, just breath – prana. (Liner note by Thomas T Stanley)

Camae Ayewa, vocals, percussion
Aquiles Navarro, Watusi cattle horn, Indonesian water buffalo horn, conch shell, piano, trumpet, percussion, vocals
Keir Neuringer, alto saxophone, soprano saxophone, Fender Rhodes, synthesizer, percussion, vocals
Luke Stewart, double bass, percussion, Mbira, whistle
Tcheser Holmes, drums, percussion, vocals

Irreversible Entanglements
are a liberation-oriented free jazz collective formed in early 2015 by saxophonist Keir Neuringer, poet Camae Ayewa (a.k.a. Moor Mother) and bassist Luke Stewart, who came together to perform at a Musicians Against Police Brutality event organized after the slaying of Akai Gurley by the NYPD. Months later the group added trumpeter Aquiles Navarro and drummer Tcheser Holmes (a duo who also performed at the MAPB event) for a single day of recording at Seizure’s Palace in Brooklyn, and the full quintet’s first time playing together was captured for this debut. In four relentless bouts of inspired fire music the instrumentalists explore and elaborate compositional ideas drawn from their deep individual studies of free jazz improvisation, but the tone of each piece is driven decisively by Ayewa’s searing poetic narrations of Black trauma, survival and power. The message is the undeniable essence of the music. Though free jazz with voice is an uncommon approach in the modern day landscape of the genre, the spirit and subject the band channels and explores represent a return to a central tenant of the sound as it was founded – to be a vehicle for Black liberation. As creative and adventurous as any recording of contemporary avant-garde jazz but offering listeners no abstractions to hide behind, this is music that both honors and defies tradition, speaking to the present while insisting on the future.

This album contains no booklet.